Husband wants to move to dubai

[Dilemma87]

My husband is a businessman in property and with the recent proposed tax changes and new rules putting limits on how long he can keep doing things from the UK, he’s now saying he needs to move to Dubai and operate from there.

We actually have some friends there, and his business partner is already based out there, so on paper it all sounds easy enough. His plan is to buy a second property in Dubai and move there by himself, while I stay here with the kids.

The problem is, the children are really settled one’s in high school and the other is due to start soon, so moving them just isn’t an option. He’s suggested that we (me and the kids) fly out to Dubai every school holiday to spend time with him.

The catch is, under his visa he can only be out of Dubai for 90 days a year, so he’d basically have to live there full-time.

AIBU to think this is just not going to work long-term? I can’t help but feel like this is the start of living completely separate lives.

Move with the kids- kids change schools all the time no big deal.

Wondee how it is for Muslim women? Do they get a rough deal?

You wish you'd brought your dc up there, why? So they too would become obsessed with money, shopping and cheating? It's the 3 things the place excels at.

Agree with this. Do you / his family not benefit from a peaceful life here in the UK? No child benefit, no use of public services? Are your children at state school? If yes, Why does he think he doesn’t need to pay for those things? Who will fund your kids education etc if we all moved to Dubai to escape paying?

What a charming attitude to children! Plenty of children grow up and remain close to their parents.

Cheating? That's interesting since adulterous sex remains illegal there. Surely a wronged spouse could potentially threaten the cheater with prison? I know most wouldn't, but the threat is there

Its just separation without the actual official separation so both have their own lives, meet up for hols and Christmas while everyone pretends the family is still united.

Agreed!

I wouldn’t even travel there on holiday, let alone move there given their treatment of migrant workers and women and would tell DH to think again.

Legal is not the same as moral.

It's interesting to see you're so anti-tax yet believe Israel is committing genocide. In the media, you don't tend to see these opinions shared by the same person, but obviously real life opinions are much more varied than that.

Thr place is full of sex workers plus enthusiastic singletons. Extra marital sex is not still illegal.

Independent of the "how good/evil is Dubai" question (presumably you've already made your peace with that side of things), this question seems to be basically what it takes to have a bigger pile of money in the bank. So let's pretend that Dubai is Australia but a bit closer and tax-free, warm, safe, no sharia, gay rights, etc etc., to take the politics out of it.

Say DH will make £100k net per year more as a result of this move. After 5 years, he (and you, if you are still together) will have £500k more in the bank. (Fill in any other number of years and annual saving. It doesn't make much difference.)

In return for that, he just has to miss his kids coming home from school every day. They just have to be essentially brought up by a single parent (unless you spend some of that £100k/year on a full-time nanny to handle all the logistics). You just have to miss being with him after they've gone to bed. And the whole family just has to miss the weekends and the little crises that you solve together as part of normal married life.

Oh, and you get to wonder what he's doing after work. A friend of ours commuted to Dubai for four years. It was a choice: women (not all "actual sex workers", but let's say there are lots of young single women trying to make it and not averse to being bought a few luxury dinners), or drink in the hotels with the other single-status professional guys. He chose to drink. Not to the point of alcoholism, but he put on three stone. Before, he used to keep fit through cycling; good luck with that in the desert.

The question for me would be, what are you planning to do with that £500k? Buy a bigger house, so that you can all live in luxury until DH decides that he's paying too much tax again, and moves to Belize to make you all even more money? Or is he going to save £300k/year for 10 years and buy himself a seat in the House of Lords with £3 million? What prize at the end of the line makes this extraordinary life choice worthwhile? When your kids are older, will they say "I wish Dad had been around when X happened", or will they say "I'm glad Dad was away so much, I got a wicked car for my 18th birthday"?

If you have five minutes, watch this (and if you're feeling brave, get DH to watch it too).

I'm not leaching - I have worked since a teenager and now in my 50s - I'm a higher earner, and think tax dodgers are scum.....

Depends where you live. Not everywhere is that dangerous, including in London.

Dubai's safety seems to be partly due to the death penalty. Is that what we want here? Europe has lower crime (including spousal murder) without resorting to those methods

Of course, the poor women at the wealthy men's porta potty parties aren't going to be prosecuted. Not much consolation, I expect..

Incorrect re adulterous sex. It is still illegal. The reform means it can only be prosecuted if the spouse complains.

https://lylawyers.com/adultery-in-the-uae/#:~:text=In%20the%20UAE%2C%20adultery%20remains,limited%20cases%2C%20a%20legal%20guardian.

Any man who would happily sack off seeing his family in order to avoid taxes... WHAT A PRINCE AMONG MEN. For various reasons, I've had to spend quite a lot of time in tax havens (not for tax reasons!) and the more time I've spent in them, the more I think they're an elaborate joke being played on the rich. Spend your life living in a cupboard in Monaco in order to avoid paying tax? BAHAHAHAAAA. Joke's on you, pal.

I believe in a relatively low tax economy and rewarding hard work and success

Nothing to add really but I'd take your place op
If i could up and leave the UK today I bloody well would.

So why dont you?

whats stopping you?

Interesting : depends how you define hard work, I suppose. Elder care is one very low-paid job, doesn't make it unimportant or easy. Childcare is another example of this, particularly nursery work. What is your opinion on this?

No you’re wrong. For many people, money is not their top priority in life and plenty are ok with paying the extra tax and contributing their fair share.

Where is this socialism, please? The Labour Party’s own charter says it’s democratic socialist - not the same thing. And this incarnation is barely that.
People didn’t need to be forced 8 to the creation of the Welfare State after the war - and the higher earners were paying a lot higher tax % then. Why have they become so selfish and grasping?

Prostitution is illegal, that is also incorrect. The difference is that police mostly turn a blind eye because the clients are wealthy. But abused prostitutes have little legal recourse due to the ban, as this excellent BBC documentary showed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce84ezl461po

Because the government is wasting our taxes. I'm a democratic socialist but I don't see what I want : immigration is oit of control, crime, schools, NHS & housing all very poor. Councils underfunded. Why?

I’m in the complete minority here but my husband works in the ME and we stay in the UK and it’s fine. We’d already lived out in the ME (different country to where he is) for almost 5 years and had an amazing life there but I just wanted a bit of normality for my son and didn’t want us to settle and uproot yet again in a few years. We’re still debating us all moving to the UAE in a few years so I love Dubai / Abu Dhabi (even if you don’t live there, Dubai is a great place to go on holiday). With my husband being away it’s afforded me to stop working, buy a big house and possibly retrain / start a new career in a few years once I’ve decided what I want to do. He’s home / we go out every 4ish weeks - it’s not the ideal situation and I think you need to be able to like your own company / have people around you to rely on / be quite independent and unflappable / have completely open and honest communication with your partner / trust each other absolutely and it works fine. For us, there had to be a huge benefit to him going (rightly or wrongly, the benefit was all money / house focused) and of course there’s the negative side of things particularly in terms of my son / relationships with other people. If your life stays exactly the same except you just end up juggling more / doing more on your own while he’s off having brunches, no it’s not worth it. If it offers big changes to your life that you couldn’t otherwise do, then I’d consider it.